Many students who enter public schools leave without achieving what has become the expected minimum level of educational attainment, a high school diploma. The purpose of this study was to contribute to existing dropout-prevention research by identifying and validating reliable decision rules for differentiating actual dropouts from high school…

Recently researchers have reported a relationship between body image and depression in early adolescents. This longitudinal study evaluated the importance of body image in the etiology of early adolescent girls' depression. Depression scores of female students (N=505) in grades 6 through 9 were assessed twice, in the fall (T1) and the spring (T2)…

Length of stay in psychiatric inpatient units has received increasing attention with the external pressures for treatment cost-effectiveness and evidence that longer hospital stays do not appear to have significant advantages over shorter hospital stays. This study examined the relationship between length of psychiatric hospital stay and…

Problems with using stepwise analytic methods are discussed, and better alternatives are illustrated. To make the illustrations concrete, an actual data set, involving responses of 91 medical school admissions directors to 30 variables, was used. The 30 variables involved perceptions of barriers to medical school with respect to characteristics of…

A dichotomous dependent variable is used to determine a combination of variables that will predict group membership. Dichotomous variables are frequently encountered in multiple regression analysis. However, several textbooks question the appropriateness of using multiple regression analysis when analyzing dichotomous dependent variables. The…

An empirical method called Predicted Error Sum of Squares (PRESS) is advanced and studied. This method is used to examine the cross-validated prediction accuracies of some popular algorithms for weighted predictor variables. The weighting methods that were considered were ordinary least squares, ridge regression, regression on principal…

A study of the cognitive processes involved in achieving coherence in discourse examined a major factor affecting the accessibility of referents: the length of absence of the referent from the distribution of different types of grammatical referential devices (definite nouns and anaphoric pronouns) in discourse. Six versions of a set of twenty…

Multivariate methods were used to identify between-set factors relating the criterion set of eleven Wechsler Adult Intelligence Scale Revised subtest variables to the predictor set of demographic variables: age, race, sex, education, occupation, geographic region, and urban versus rural residence. Although factor analysis is usually used to…

Longitudinal research has shown that communication deficits (negative interaction) precede the development of relationship distress. To investigate the antecedents of relationship stability and adjustment 31 couples who were seriously considering marriage participated in a longitudinal study. The couples initially completed the Marital Inventories…

A study of 188 superintendents and 379 school board members in districts with student enrollments above 25,000 sheds light on several factors affecting the working relationships between superintendents and their local boards. Board members tended to follow personal judgment rather than constituent preferences when making decisions, and received…

Indicator checklists (questionnaires or checklists that contain selected predictive items from longer, comprehensive instruments) are used by states to monitor the conformance of human service providers with state requirements. This guide provides instructions for developing such a checklist as part of an instrument-based program monitoring…

Many social policies rely on assessments of violence potential in their implementation. Decisions concerning such civil matters as involuntary institutionalization and level of institutional custody, and criminal matters such as type or length of sentence and the granting of bail often rely on estimates of the potential that an individual will be…

The relationship between friendship expectations, assessment of present friendships, and friendship satisfaction, as well as the degree to which friends were similar on these variables were investigated for black and white adolescents. Subjects were 150 eighth-grade students from a public school in the southeastern United States. Fifty-six…

Designing university counseling services around variables that correlate with school success and help-seeking behavior might allow for better use of counseling resources. This study investigated whether noncognitive variables identified as being related to student success were predictive of whether black students and white students would seek help…

Actual data sets were used to illustrate how substantially different conclusions and implications can be drawn from alternate multiple regressions predicting academic achievement from the same set of variables measuring student background. Variables assessing students' socioeconomic status and geographic mobility, used to predict reading and math…